


Low Stature, Long Arms

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dwarves In Exile, Gen, Kink Meme, size prejudice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In-progress fill for the kink meme, "Dwarves don't see themselves as small. After the fall of Erebor they would be constantly confronted with the difference...something with Thorin and his companions dealing with the ignorance of their strength and skills."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, I am making no profit from this story. Read the original prompt and fill here: http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/5346.html?thread=10958562#t10958562
> 
> General note - This is very soon after the fall of Erebor, so in my headcanon Dwalin and Thorin are the human equivalent of teenagers, maybe 15/16ish. There will be a Part 2 to this, so stay tuned!

 

  
_Malice is of a low stature, but it hath very long arms.  
\- _ George Savile, Marquess of Halifax

If any of the Dwarves of Erebor were asked to describe Dwalin, son of Fundin, the first word to come to mind would be, ‘Tall.’  
  
He took after his father. Fundin was fully five feet four inches and had to duck through doorways in many dwarrow-dwellings. All Dwalin’s life, he’d seen his father look down on kings, the great and powerful craning their necks to meet his eyes. When he was himself still a young dwarfling, barely able to braid his beard, Dwalin was used to visiting dignitaries mistaking his age, but his elder brother was quick to correct their misapprehension. Having the form of a grown dwarf did not come hand in hand with the wisdom or age and experience, Balin would say, reaching (up) to ruffle his brother’s hair fondly.  
  
Those descendents of Durin the Deathless were known for their long beards, their fearlessness in battle and their height. “As tall as a Man,” they said of Fundin, and later, Dwalin, always smiling and adding, “but three times as strong and twice as fierce.”  
  
After their Mountain fell and their people were scattered throughout the wild, no one joked like that anymore.  
  
The Men of Dale were accustomed to Dwarves, respectful and even friendly given that the bounty of the mountain in whose shadow they lived supplemented their livelihoods. They traded with them, mingled with them in the market, drank with them and knew their customs and ways as well as any outsider could, which was to say not at all, but they were neighbors in the most congenial sense of the word.  
  
Many in the small villages and towns they passed through in their exile had never seen Dwarves before in their lives, only heard about them from legends. The stories that spread in those towns likened Dwarves to Goblins, bent little creatures that shied from sunlight and crept into homes through cracks in the doors to steal the breath from babes in the cradle, sour the milk and make off with your coin purses.  
  
The most ignorant were not outwardly hostile; merely curious. _What are these queer little creatures?_ they would murmur among themselves. Many demurred their offers to work as smiths, miners and farriers, not because they heard that Dwarves were cheats and scoundrels, but because they could not fathom that beings the size of children could do such work.

Thorin found those suppositions and outright dismissal more grating than suspicion and insults about their alleged greed and untrustworthy natures.  
  
“This is intolerable,” he groused into a mug of ale he and Dwalin were forced by lack of funds to share.  
  
He was nearly as tall as his cousin, though not as broad. Thorin was a prince, used to commanding respect by his presence and name alone. Now? He was no one, an oddity. A half-Man some of the idiots in this town had called him, smiling indulgently and speaking slowly, as one would to the dim or very young when he offered to make use of his hammer in their forges.  
  
At Erebor their work was praised, their swords and axes etched with carvings that would strengthen the steel and make their blows more deadly. They worked to honor their ancestors, their Maker and themselves. Now they toiled for pennies to scrape together enough food to last them the week.    
  
 _”You can beg or you can work,”_ his father said the first time they took up their tools to work with substandard materials on simple tools. It was the best piece of advice Thráin had ever or would ever give his son. But how were they to work when Men looked down their noses and sneered at their bodies without any notion of the might of their race?

“Don’t see as we’ve got a choice, but to tolerate,” Dawlin grumbled, taking a long swill from the tankard and handing it back to Thorin. They were sharing a table in a darkened corner of an alehouse, selfishly spending their coppers on ale rather than spend the afternoon among their people. The sight of their dirty, hopeless faces were too much for the young dwarf to bear this day and Dwalin was only too happy to accompany him, even if the chairs were too high to sit comfortably in. They were so high off the ground they had to perch on the very edge so that their feet could rest flat on the ground.  
  
Thorin rested his head in hands, looking decades older and wearier than his true age. “What did we survive _for_?” he asked, keeping his voice low as though he feared being overheard. The only person who was permitted to glimpse his fear was Dwalin and he could not look at his friend as he spoke, ashamed to reveal so much to him. “To starve to death in the wilderness, our work scorned and people mocked?”  
  
“I’m no soothsayer,” the other lad shook his head and sighed. “Can’t say. Got to be meant for better than this.”  
  
“You boys old enough to be drinking?” a Man laughed nearby. He appeared to be past his thirtieth year; that would make Thorin nearly twice his age. “Might have hair on your faces, but you don’t stand higher’n m’little daughter!”  
  
Dwalin scowled and pushed his chair away from the table. Thorin did not try to stop him, for his mood was bitter enough that it could only improve once Dwalin gave the impudent lout a thorough routing.  
  
The Man laughed - why the little fellow didn’t stand higher than his chest! “Ooh, touchy, is he? Or _is_ it a lass?” he asked. “As I hear it, their women are just as ugly as their men! Let’s see what it’s got under it’s - ” But his words were cut off when one quick blow from Dwalin’s broad fist lifted him off his feet and he landed in a heap on the alehouse floor.  
  
“Got any other smart remarks?” the dwarf growled. The other Men in the pub who looked intrigued at the threat of violence, upon seeing its delivery suddenly became very interested in their drinks and prior conversation.  
  
When the two returned to the camp that night, they were thoroughly reamed out by their fathers. “What do you mean, spending our coin on drink!” Thráin roared, smelling the ale on his son’s breath and hauling him bodily into a clearing to chastise him. “Did you find work today, lad? Did you?”  
  
“You know I did not. You know there is none to be had,” Thorin said, not lowering his eyes from his father’s fiery gaze for that show of cowardice would enrage him more than the waste of money.  
  
Thráin was beside himself with anger. This foolishness, this _thoughtlessness_ he might expect from Frerin. If brains were flint he’d not have enough to strike together and make a spark, but Thorin was older and, until today, his father thought him wiser. “And what will our people think, their prince and the son of the head of our Guard getting pissed in an alehouse of Men? What will you do tomorrow, I wonder? Will you spend the last of your money at a whorehouse, thinking to bed their women?” Thráin asked, disgusted. “Use your head, you are heir to the throne!”  
  
“What throne?” Thorin spat angrily. This defiance was utterly unlike him, but his rage had gone unquenched for so long he no longer knew upon whom his wrath should likely fall. His father and his father’s pride was the most immediate target.  
  
Thráin looked so dumbfounded it was as though his son had struck him. “I will forgive such insolence once,” he said, drawing very close to his son’s face and raising a hand warningly. “ _Once_. Do not speak that way to me again, do you understand? Or you’ll have a more formidable opponent than those drunken villagers to contend with.” And the prince strode away, leaving his son alone in the forest, cheeks aflame with mingled anger and despair.  
  
Back at camp, quite a ruckus had been raised. Despite Thráin’s attempt to keep his son’s behaviour under wraps, word had got out that the younger of Fundin’s two sons laid a Man out in a brawl and any chance of finding work in this town vanished the moment his head hit the floor.

“What’s wrong with you, boy?” Fundin bellowed, alerting the last of those to hear the gossip of precisely what trouble was afoot. He did not have Thráin’s sense of discretion and preferred to give his son a verbal routing publicly. “Have you no sense?”  
  
“We were insulted!” Dwalin cried in his defense. “What were we to do? What of our pride?”  
  
“Pride!” Fundin seized the ends of his white beard as if he meant to tear it out. The dwarf seemed to swell in his anger, but compared to the Man he’d hit earlier, Dwalin thought his father very small indeed. “And will you eat your pride? Will your pride put food on the table for our kinfolk? No one’ll be able to find work thanks to your damned pride!”  
  
“I wouldn’t work for them anyway!” Dwalin declared defiantly. “Do you see them? Do you see how they _look_ at us?”  
  
“Oh, aye,” his father replied and his dark eyes shadowed over, the scars in his face deepening as he scowled. “I see alright. But do you see? Do you see the faces of the wee ones as don’t have enough to eat? Do you hear their cries at night? Because I do. And I’ll abide the fool words of Men to keep our folk alive. Because that’s what my pride’s in, son. My pride in our people can’t be dented by a few laughs or stupid jokes.” And the ire seemed to drain out of him, leaving only exhaustion and disappointment. “You shamed me today.”  
  
Dwalin felt as though he was the one who’d been punched in the chest. All the insults, the mocking smiles, the barely-suppressed laughter, they were nothing compared to the hot guilt flooding his blood and making his hands shake. As ever when Dwalin was in over his head, his elder brother was nearby, though today he had no words of reassurance to give,  
  
“It is difficult to bear,” he said, his manner not as severe as his father’s was, but it was clear Balin was unhappy with him as well. “Believe me, I know. But _think_ next time, will you?” His gaze softened and he almost smiled at his brother. “You are a dwarf of action. Which is admirable, but not every strange look must end in a black eye nor should all bad jokes result in a bloody lip. Agreed?”  
  
Dwalin could only nod, swallowing hard, eyes not on his brother’s too-kind face, but on the tips of his shoes instead. With his head bowed like that, it was easy for Balin to reach up and tousle his hair with exasperated fondness, as he would do when Dwalin was younger and they were all so content in Erebor. Back then they would never have dreamed that they would be reduced to this.


	2. Chapter 2

It was as Fundin predicted; no one in the town of Man would hire them out for even the most menial of labors. Not a word was said about it to Thorin and Dwalin - the dwindling rations spoke volumes. Yet, aside from their fathers that first night, no one really condemned the lads. They were right, it was humiliating to fall so far that their skill - once requested by kings - was now scorned by peasants.  
  
They would not linger where they were not wanted and so, as was quickly becoming loathed habit to them by now, they packed up and journeyed on. The next village they found - settling on the outskirts, ready to ride again at the merest rumor of trouble - was only slightly more promising than the last had been. Without prompting, both lads hefted their hammers onto their shoulders and set out to seek employment before cockcrow.  
  
The Man who was the town’s master blacksmith looked at the Dwarves doubtfully. In the near darkness of earlier morning, the only real source of light was from the fires of the forge and beyond the walls of the smithy, they cast more shadows than they illuminated. He did not see their broad shoulders and thick arms, hard with muscle. he only saw the tops of their heads, the taller one was even shorter than his sister. Rubbing the scruff on his face that Men counted as beards, he replied doubtfully, “Eh, not sure as I need help with heavy forging...”  
  
They had their own hammers, which meant they were Journeymen at least, but the Man did not trust that was necessarily the case. These were Dwarves after all; just as likely they stole the hammers off some worthy Men as came by them honestly.  
  
The shorter one set his jaw, looked him square in the eyes and said, “We’ll take what work we can get. We’re strong and we don’t tire easy. All we ask is to be paid fairly.”  
  
As it turned out the Man, whose name was Jon, lost himself an apprentice just last week, ran off to try his luck at sea, more fool him. Luck was smiling on the dwarrow lad for his brother-in-law was laid up in bed after being thrown from his horse, so there _was_ work that needed to be done. “Alright,” he said after a minute’s contemplation. “I’ll hire you out for the day - nothing I can pay you _too_ handsomely for, fetching, cleaning, the like. That suit you?”  
  
It absolutely did not. Thorin and Dwalin had been learning and plying their trade for decades and neither had been asked to sweep the shop floor since they were in their thirties. Beyond the mere confines of their age and experience, smithing was in their blood. Literally.  
  
Before the first of their race trod beneath the earth, their Maker toiled away in His celestial forge and so fashioned the fathers of their line. Durin the Deathless was a great smith of the First Age and so it followed that the Longbeards who came after them inherited something of his skill and prowess. Their shields shone brightest, their jewelry trebled the worth of the diamonds laid within it and their swords were as deadly as they were beautiful.  
  
Dwalin and Thorin inherited this legacy and now put it to work clearing away filings and cranking the grindstone. The work suited them very ill, but not as ill as starvation. So, biting their tongues and tamping down their pride, they agreed to the terms the smith laid out for them with nary a word of complaint.  
  
Jon quickly realized there was much more to the dwarrow lads than he’d originally assumed. The taller of the two hefted heavy buckets of water with such careless ease, they might have been cups of tea. The shorter one (they did not give him their names and he did not ask) actually let the flames lick his hand before declared the blaze sufficiently hot. They were so efficient at work that the menial tasks he assigned them were completed to perfection within the hour - he’d never seen the place so clean.

The pair did not request aid when things were placed too high for them, either dragging over a stool or giving one another a boost and reach the higher shelves. Aside from inquiring about the location of objects in the shop, the dwarves did not ask for help, nor did they seem to require it.  
  
“Done already?” the Man asked, a bit stupidly since the smithy was spotless.  
  
The shorter of the pair nodded and a shadow passed over his face; they were to be paid for a full day’s labor, but they’d completed their work so quickly the sun was only barely caressing the earth with her rosy fingers. Would the Man refuse to pay them in full? They signed no contract, he might go back on his word. Clenching his jaw and steeling himself for disappointment, Thorin reflected that his father was right; he was irresponsible and a poor prince for their people to rely upon.  
  
The Man let out a low whistle and rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. “You lads do smithwork among your own folk?” he asked.  
  
They both nodded and when the smith made further inquiries as to how long they’d been apprenticed their reply made his eyes bug out of his head comically and he stammered, “That’s...that’s...well. Nearly as long as I’ve been on the earth.”  
  
“Our race is long-lived,” Thorin shrugged simply. “It’s why our work is so fine, we take care in learning our trade.”  
  
“Suppose you must,” Jon nodded. Then, making a decision he was only half-sure he’d regret, he said, “I got a few orders I could use a hand with, do you mind staying on for the rest of the day?”  
  
“You’ll be paying us for ‘em?” the big one asked, eyeing the Man suspiciously. It might be a trick, get them to agree to a certain pay, squeeze more work out of them than they originally agreed to and only give them enough coin to cover the first agreement.  
  
“Aye, that I will,” Jon nodded, holding out his hand. “I’d give you a contract to sign, only I don’t write, but I can give you my word and it’s considered good enough to go on in these parts. Name’s Jon and if your work is good, I’ll give you what you’re owed.”  
  
“Thorin,” the shorter dwarf replied, shaking the Man’s hand after only a second of hesitation. He had been about to add, ‘son of Thráin’ but he remembered with a pang that his father’s name would lend him no added legitimacy here. “At your service.”  
  
“Dwalin, at your service,” his friend said politely, taking the Man’s hand when it was offered. Their fingers were short and broad, Jon’s hand nearly swallowed theirs up, but the strength of their grips was astonishing. He was not a weak person by any stretch of the imagination and the Dwarves clearly spent enough time around Men to know that they ought not grasp their hands as firmly as they would their own people, but when sealing the deal with the young dwarrows his fingers felt as though they’d been placed in a vice.  
  
The greatest act was still to come, that which would prompt a country blacksmith to defend the reputation of Dwarves in his village for the rest of his life. The horse that threw his brother-in-law was new-broken and skittish. Since they’d paid a pretty penny for it, neither he nor his sister were willing to put it down. They thought it might have been a fluke, that more time on the farm would set it to rights and they needed the creature to pull the plow for them. Jon’s sister had been trying to get the damn thing hitched while her husband was laid up when the cursed beast bolted down the fields toward the forge, her chasing after it and calling out a warning to her brother as she ran.

Jon heard Bess’s cries from far off and the tread of fast moving hooves was unmistakable. He ran out of the forge and saw the beast cantering toward him, panic and fear in those liquid black eyes of the thing. It reared back, whinnying even as Jon spread his arms, trying to corner the thing. His last impression was off a hoof driving down toward his head.  
  
He barely had time to panic before he felt himself lifted around the middle and thrown out of the way as if he was was light as a sack of feathers. He hit the ground hard and saw the taller dwarf ducking away from the hooves of the creature while the other came up from the side to try and hold it still by the reins. The horse bucked and twisted its body this way and that and Jonn’s heart clenched in painful sympathy when the shorter dwarf - Thorin - took a kick right to the chest.  
  
Bess screamed, hands going to her mouth in horror, sure that the child - for she was still at such a distance that she did not recognize the small figure as a dwarf - was good as dead. Thorin staggered, but did not fall. He was quick to recover his balance and seemed more angry with his own clumsiness than he was hurt from the attack. Rubbing his chest, he redoubled his efforts, Dwalin coming around the horse’s other side and together they managed to steady and calm the beast, at least to the point where it wasn’t trying to bolt any longer.  
  
“Might want to put this one down,” Dwalin observed, shaking his head. “S’not right, you can tell. Won’t make you a good draft animal.”  
  
“Are _you_ alright?” Jon asked, still staring in disbelief at Thorin who displayed no outward sign of distress after taking a blow that would have killed a full grown Man. Bess joined them by now and was wringing her hands in distress.  
  
The dwarrow lad hitched his shoulders uncomfortably, “Not quick enough, but I’m fine. Have a nice bruise for a few days, more embarrassing than anything.”  
  
“Embarrassing?” Bess joined them at last, running down the hill at a quick clip, though she was giving the wild horse a wide berth. “You should have been killed!”  
  
The dwarves looked at one another, smiles curling their lips. “Eh, bloodied, maybe, nothing more,” Dwalin shrugged, then gave Bess a critical look. “You alright, missus?”  
  
“Fine, fine, not a scratch on me,” she said, breathless with astonishment. Then, remembering her manners, said, “I can’t...I don’t know words enough to thank you. You lads - you saved my brother’s life.” And her eyes filled with tears as she looked upon Jon, whole and hale.  
  
If anything, these words of praise embarrassed the young dwarves more than Thorin’s injury. “Anyone would’ve done the same,” he said after a moment, awkwardly nodding at the compliment.  
  
“Not anyone,” Jon shook his head, feeling a little faint himself as the reality of the situation really sank in. “Not most folks, I’d wager.”  
  
“We aren’t most folks,” Dwalin observed, more accurately than even he knew.  
  
There are some who will say that Dwarves are not heroes. That they care more for gold than they do for anything else, that they hold themselves to no creeds and value nothing above wealth. And while that might be true for some Dwarves, some of the time, that day two of that oft-scorned race were heroes in the eyes of a simple farmer’s wife and her brother.

Once they had the skittish horse safely locked away in the stables, the dwarves returned, insisting on working the full day for Jon as they pledged they would. Bess came around for the midday meal with small ale to drink and fresh baked mincemeat pies. She insisted that they take some extra with them, once Thorin let slip that they were traveling with others. It would not be nearly enough food to feed the whole camp, but he was grateful for the meal just the same, even if neither he nor Dwalin thought they’d done anything extraordinary in stopping the mad horse.  
  
Jon paid them as he promised, with a few extra silvers for going above and beyond the terms of their verbal contract. Bess was there when they took their leave and _insisted_ her brother go after them when he confessed he had not secured another day’s work from them. “They’re a better sort than half the Men in the village,” she said, giving his shoulder a little shove to urge him along. “I’m happy to have ‘em under our roof, now go on and don’t be ass-stubborn!”  
  
Jogging along down the sloping hillside toward the road, he called out after the dwarves and they stopped, turning to look over their shoulders at him curiously. “How long will your people be staying in these parts?” he asked, slightly breathless from running.  
  
Thorin and Dwalin exchanged a slightly wary look. “Can’t say,” Thorin shrugged. “Could be three days, could be three months, if there’s work to be had and folks don’t object to our wagons.”  
  
“Well, I’d have you working for me as long as you’re nearby,” Jon offered. “And if any of your kinfolk need employment, I can afford one or two more. Hard up for apprentices just at the moment and wintertime’s devilish hard on plows and the like. Should be plenty of work as the farmers get ready to start their planting.”  
  
The generosity of the offer shocked both lads to the core. Dwalin recovered first and said, “My father’s a deft hand with a hammer. Taught me all I know.”  
  
“I’ve got a younger brother,” Thorin said, trying and failing not to sound _too_ grateful. “Too young for hard forging, but he should be apprenticing now, he can sweep and fetch as needed.”  
  
“If they’re even a bit like the both of you, they’re welcome a thousand times over,” Jon nodded firmly. “I mean it. You have my word on that.” Extending his arm, he shook the broad, calloused fingers of the dwarves warmly and smiled on them with all his heart. Now he knew their true strength and counted it a blessing that they should have come into their land.  
  
Dwalin and Thorin, while they would never consider any aspect of their exile a blessing, were simply happy to be of use and could return to their families with their heads held high, grateful that today they displayed strength of a different sort than that which swung hammers and bent metal. A quieter sort of strength that, when properly employed, could break down walls made of sterner stuff than brick and mortar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't resist these little moralistic endings, but to be fair I think this fic really needed one. Also, all apologies to the Tolkien estate, but 'Dwarves are not heroes'? Pssh, give me a break! Finally, I wrote this second half while listening to Heather Alexander's "Laddie Are Ya Workin'?" on repeat, aside from the repeated references to threshing, it fits well.


End file.
